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The Forgotten Meme
The Forgotten Meme is a 2018 album set in New Albion. It is composed in a cyberpunk style, a much expected expansion of the New Albion genre exploration. The album stars Kerttu Aarnipuu as the Meme, Psyche Corporation as Han-Mi/The Narrator and Paul Shapera as Raven. It was released on June 30, 2018. The album is mostly composed of entirely original tracks, but it features New Albion 11 track with musical callbacks to the earlier New Albion tracks - most notably the theme of the The Dolls of New Albion reproduced for the album's genre. Plot Han-Mi introduces the setting of the story. It all starts with a place where the memes go when they are forgotten as well as the rest of cyber-information. It is the space AIs used to use for experiments and once they were gone the doors were not properly closed. Among those creatures is the Little Meme. She finds herself in the dark space surrounded by the creatures. She cannot move and she collects pieces of scrap metal to create a shell, which makes her resemble a bug. Now that she can move, the Meme lets nothing stop her. She climbs through the tunnels below the city. Unlike the other non-organic creatures, the Meme is not happy in the dark room, she wants love. The Meme finds herself in a city. The city is New Albion. It is overwhelming and the Meme can't make her way safely until a stranger picks her up. That stranger is none other than Raven, admiring the grotesque appearance of the Meme. The Meme is insecure, but Raven tells her that to him she is beautiful and looks through the narratives, deciding where to put her. Suddenly, the Meme made a decision to climb high above the buzzing streets and away from the danger of being trampled. She climbs a building where in a small, dark room she finds a beautiful girl Rebecca. The girl sits in the room, tubes hanging out of her and the Meme falls in love with her. Rebecca is inside a virtual reality, a game with Arabian Nights theme. She barely ever plugs out and the Meme watches and admires her. Finally, the Meme summons the courage and crawls onto Rebecca's lap. She feels deep love for Rebecca but fears the moment Rebecca opens her eyes and sees what the Meme looks like. The Meme starts to notice that Rebecca is starting to waste away. She realizes that Rebecca would die if she doesn't unplug and decides to join the game in order to lure Rebecca out. The two of them met in the game and even became friends. It was the best time of the Meme's life. She and Rebecca became close and even admitted romantic love for each other. But it all made the Meme fear even more of the moment Rebecca sees her. ]] Despite enjoying her time deeply, the Meme started noticing that the game functioned as a psyche vacuum, drawing some deeper and deeper until there was no return for them. It turns out that the creatures from the dark room had the ability to infiltrate some deep corners of cyber-reality. They evolved to feed on the psyche of the gamers in the VR. Rebecca fell victim to the trap and the creatures came for her. However, the Meme wrapped herself around Rebecca and wouldn't let the creatures take her. The creatures recognized the Meme, they recognized that she was one of them. But the Meme fought. She asked and begged them to let Rebecca go. She told them Rebecca was all she ever loved. The creatures wouldn't let go. The situation escalated into a fight between the creatures and the Meme. Finally, Rebecca opened her eyes in her dark little room and found a strange looking bug sitting on her lap, looking at her with love. Cast and Characters Kerttu Aarnipuu as Meme, a meme Psyche Chimere as Han-Mi, the narrator Paul Shapera as Raven, a post-human Cover art by Shibara Soundtrack Trivia * A full transcript of the album is here * Rebecca's reaction to the Meme's appearance was not explicitly stated. However, based on the key and Han-Mi's tone, a happy ending is implied. * The Forgotten Meme is one of the rare Paul Shapera albums to end on a happy note, unlike his other better-sweet or tragic endings. * There are 4 behind the scenes videos of recording the album, all titled "Recording Kerttu". Most of these videos are quite bizarre (Paul is singing songs in public and talking about wearing Kerttu's skin, Kerttu is chasing Paul around her apartment etc.), but one of them shows Kerttu singing a part of the last track, "Homecomings That Don't Suck Rarely Make Good Stories".